


Insight, Wisdom, Creation

by MSW_Skule



Series: Knowing the unknowable [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets, Hogwarts Forbidden Forest, Music, Rituals, Tea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MSW_Skule/pseuds/MSW_Skule
Summary: Ron, Hermione, and Harry start their first year.
Series: Knowing the unknowable [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2083926
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Insight, Wisdom, Creation

"T'would be better to cast your last sense into the void, than to give such a name unto your own fears," she screamed. "Cast it's shackles from your heart, let fear not rule your soul!" The bloody stone was cast into place, and a white flash pushed the wraiths back, but it flickered and waned against the onslaught of soul eating fiends. 

And lo, she saw a cruel smile come over her companion, deepening his eyes, fraying her concentration with flashes of tarot and failing crowns. The taste of ozone and sweat, mildew and spun suger surge across her tongue.

"Eoe Expecto Mortus"

* * *

"Harry Potter is _not_ on the train to Hogwarts." The freckled boy drawls, eyes drooped low, a smug smile dancing onto his face. He looked to have been enjoying his time asleep, his company quietly reading. As the train passed under a hill, the witch, for she could be not else, drew a light from the air, so that her place on the page remained undisturbed. Her eyes did not lift from the tome.

"As if you'd know! Tattered robes, red hair and no sense that you're speaking with your betters, you're not but a Weasl-", a whisper in the blond boy's ear, deafening as a gale, soft as goose feathers, "Careful". 

If the other passengers noticed the abruptness of the end of his rant, they did not show it.

"You speak of legends as though they might be lying around, free for you to claim as your own. If you have searched the train, and have not found him, then he is not here." The rather buck-toothed girl explained. "Now, if you please", the rug beneath the three boys surged up like a wave and deposited them (still standing) firmly at the end of the car. The door shut with a finality. 

"Was that entirely necessary? I'm rather fond of the feud betwixt our houses." Ronald Weasley's words float into the air as a breeze and into her mind as a Whisper.

She places a mark of lavender with her wand at her place, ere regarding the boy with a gimlet eye. "You shouldn't play with your food." She says, as if he needs scolding.

* * *

Hermione Granger does not meet Harry Potter until the sorting.

"Though I'm rather loathe to allow such ambition to go unrecognized, given your nature I must put you in: RAVENCLAW." The hat crows the last word as an oracle might proclaim a doom, irrefutable and content.

She scrunches her face like the twelve year old she is. "What do you mean, 'my nature'?" But the cloth and stitches holding the myriad of enchantments is taken off her head before it can answer. She contemplates the hat's brief and confusing sorting as Harry Potter is called and sorted. 

He sits down across from her at the table in bronze and blue. The rune Sowilo stands out hot and fierce above green eyes peering over half moon frames, simple, silver. He is imposing for an eleven year old. "You have been watching me." He is blunt and not a bit endearing. "Have you seen what you wished to see?" He acts unamused, though there is an admirance in his eye.

Instead of answering right off, she takes a leg off a roast chicken, and piles high two plates of vegetables, eschewing anything cooked in too much butter, afore sliding one his way. "I have seen much I did not wish to see. You seemed a mystery no one had bothered to solve, and with such an easy solution, it was impossible to resist. Though, you're rather boring aren't you?"

As "Ronald Weasley" was called, Harry merely shrugged and replied, "I suppose so."

Ron sat next to Hermione after he was sorted, asked Harry if he was any good at chess, and proceeded to devour a full four plates of the richest fare at the table.

Though Harry Potter knew the Hogwarts school song by route, he did not participate in the singing. Neither did Hermione. Ron sang near loud enough for all three of them.

* * *

"An etch-a-sketch?" Hermione asks, peering over Harry's shoulder. Runes, unpowered, and a chain of symbolic animals wrap in a spiral on the toy.

"I was in need of something completely inert, magically speaking. How do you draw up your prototypes?" He retorts, mock-offended. It draws a smirk from her, and she pulls a pencil out of her hair and a notebook from the bag at her feet. The sun is bright as she draws a simple glyph to ward them from sight, and does not power it.

Harry's eyebrows shoot up, and he dives away, as the paper shines as though a sun had been born in their midst before turning to ash. 

"Am-bi-ent Ma-gic," comes a singing retort from Ron, napping as he was a few yards away, under a great black walnut tree. Hermione's hands leapt to her eyes in an effort to relieve the pain.

* * *

"Indeed? I'd not thought young Miss Granger so well trained." Albus says, sipping his tea with aplomb. 

"She isn't, as you well know. She hadn't thought it was safe because of the lead, which wasn't in her pencil, but the mundaneness of the act itself," Harry retorts, putting two sugar cubes into his cup.

"Ah, but so well read. Come now Harry, it's been an age since you were so afraid to look me in the eye."

"Your beard is tied up as a glyph of warding of sight all about your face. This, coincidentally, means it is all but impossible to look you in the eye, as you well know." the boy replies, staring at his tea. "An apt lesson if directed at the wrong person."

"Yes yes, now what's this I hear about you calling Professor Snape 'Master', during class?" At this Potter rolls his eyes at the unsubtle change of topic, afore responding: "I had thought 'Master' Snape might be more inclined to answer questions should he be referred to as respectfully as his Mastery implied. He took it as insolence."

Albus simply remarks, "Had it been any student save you, he might at that."

Not wishing to delve yet again into the mire that was his parents' relationships with the rather greasy potions professor, he asks, "How long were you blinded?" The Headmaster waves this question away as though it was part of the fog that surrounds them.

* * *

Their conversation continued for many hours, ending just in time for Harry to bath ere making his way to astronomy.

The young wizard opens his eyes, taking in azure bedspreads and mahogany nightstands. Ron's bed is rumpled with his covers askew. There is a soft singing from the water closet at the north of the tower. As Stephan and Terry are still sleeping Harry is careful not to step on the squeaky board by his bed as he makes his way to the showers. 

The closer he drew to the door, the more he heard, trumpets and cellos, piccolos, and pianos, heavy drums and crashing cymbals. By the time he had made the journey of a dozen steps, A grand cacophony had built, only to be suddenly silenced as he grasped the door handle. Ere opening the door he glanced about to see if the other children were still sleeping. 

If any had heard, there was no sign. 

He opened the door slowly. He could hear a shower running, but the lights were off. A chill ran down his spine, but he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"Weasley? Are you in here?" He half whispered in the dark. It was cold. His mind had but a moment to take in the lack of steam, before his scar flared out in greater pain than he had ever known. Even when Quirrell had returned over the summer he had not felt such sheer agony.

"Is that parasite bothering you, Harry?" Ron was pale even against the decades-faded baby blue tiles. His hair was still so wet it was dripping onto his fresh robes. "Well, we can't have that." He reached up at Harry's bloody brow and _pulled_. 

* * *

Down far underneath the school, a jar cracked and shook and fell over. And in the Chamber of Secrets a great gasp was heard, followed by wet coughing.

* * *

Hermione had a mind like a box made of adamantine and mithril, and a skeptic streak a mile wide, her mother had bragged at dinner over and over to anyone who would listen. This may have a rather strong bearing on the idea that she honestly _could not_ believe that Ron Weasley had _killed_ Harry Potter. 

"But it's his body. What do you mean that's not Harry?" Ron, confused and distressed argues, "if we don't do something everyone will know he's dead! And they'll know it was me who did for him! And then they'll burn me at the stake!" He was becoming rather frantic.

Her brow was furrowed as she responded, "Wizards don't burn people at the stake Ron, honestly." She pulled her wand out of her hat and began to go over what magic she knew that might fix this.

The door to the showers opened.

Ron and Hermione froze and turned to the entrance.

And in stepped Harry Potter, covered in what looked like grey slime,viscera and bits of pottery. He summoned his wand and glasses to himself, and spoke firmly, "If I cannot get a shower soon, we will be late for class."

As the rest of his dorm mates shuffled into their clothes and out the portrait hole, and as Hermione and Ron waited in the common room, Harry took in his corpse. 

* * *

After a short time the three caught up to the rear of the class. 

Ron raised his hand for every question, and knew every constellation he was called on to name.

Harry hadn't planned on asking how he knew so much about the stars, chalking it up to a hobby, or study. So Hermione asked the next morning at breakfast, "Is it a hobby or have you got a photographic memory or-" 

Ron peered over the mound of bacon and eggs he had laid claim to, and answered succinctly, "you did tell me not to play with my food."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna aim for three chapters per year. I had a hard time not just starting in third year honestly. So many ideas. I had the food out during the sorting as I always thought it was weird they'd expect a bunch of teenagers who likely haven't had a whole lot of food besides the sweets off the trolley all day, to behave while kids get sorted.


End file.
